Last week, Free quietly released a new update to its router (known as a Freebox) firmware, which installed an ad blocking feature. While many users use ad blocking on their own browsers or computers, this marked the first time any major ISP, anywhere, installed ad blocking at the ISP level.

Free has still not responded to Ars' repeated requests for comment. Google also did not immediately respond.

The move was quickly dubbed “AdGate” by the French media, and it appears to have stemmed from a revenue dispute between Free and Google. In France, like in many places, ISPs have been getting upset with the search giant driving large amounts of traffic (most notably, YouTube) over their networks.

What's good enough for Orange...

Still, last year, France’s largest ISP, Orange (the brand name of France Telecom), managed to strike a deal (Google Translate) with Google that required Mountain View to compensate Orange for some of the traffic it was sending. For months now, Free has tried to put pressure on Google to get a similar deal by throttling YouTube traffic for Free users.

When that didn’t work, Free then implemented its ad block last week—which affected, according to BFM Business (Google Translate), all of Google’s ad servers. This halted ads alongside search, Gmail, and YouTube.

As a result, French online media groups were definitely not happy and the French government quickly got involved. The telecom regulatory agency, known as ARCEP, sent a letter to Free last week.

On Monday, France’s digital economy minister, Fleur Pellerin, held meetings with the heads of France’s ad agencies and online publishers to discuss the block. Pellerin also met one-on-one (Google Translate) with Maxime Lombardini, director-general of Illiad, Free’s parent company. In an interview with the French newspaper La Tribune, Pellerin demurred (Google Translate) on the underlying issue.

“Today there are real questions about the distribution of value among content providers, notably video—which consume a lot of bandwidth—and operators,” she said. “In the United States, paid confidential agreements have been signed with some operators. In France and in Europe, we must find ways of integrating more consensual [agreements] between Internet giants [with] national ecosystems. Free’s initiative clearly highlights the immediate importance of this issue.”

Doubling dipping by ISPs. The users are the ones requesting the data - and the users are paying for the connection.

Nothing but simple greed.

Exactly -- if the way users are using their connection is costing the ISPs more than what the users are paying -- make the users pay more. But they wouldn't do that, it would be a bad PR move -- better to try to blame it on the content providers.

Although I wish Google would just cut them all off, it probably will never reach that point. Maybe if they extort enough money such that it is no longer profitable for Google, but if it ever reaches that point, we probably have a lot of other things to worry about.

If they hadn't mentioned this was in France multiple times, I would have thought "Free" was a Chinese ISP (based entirely on the premise that they're blocking content regardless of what users want). I also find it ironic that an ISP called "Free" is attempting to shake down Google for money - they might want to change their name to "Cheap" or "Greedy" to reflect their values a little more accurately.

I am very happy that I have a choice of ISP where I live, and while that hasn't brought the price down too much (dammit Google Fiber, you should have chosen my city!), it at least allows me to avoid poor service.

Although I wish Google would just cut them all off, it probably will never reach that point. Maybe if they extort enough money such that it is no longer profitable for Google, but if it ever reaches that point, we probably have a lot of other things to worry about.

"Oh you have a problem with YouTube? No problem, let us block that for you.".

Since French citizens have a choice of which ISP they use, that would suck for Free.

Very simple. Google should block all users coming from this ISP with a message that they do not tolerate companies trying to blackmail them and possible with suggestion to switch to other ISP companies.

I would immediately cancel my Internet service if I notice my provider is making Youtube or any other service slower. Why doesn't the EU apply its net neutrality there? Making some service slower is anti competitive.

And if their users use other service, then what? Will they also make Netlifx slower, or Vimeo or any websites that makes them consume allot of transfer? They should leave the Internet providing service if this guys do not know what they are doing. Their users WANT Internet, not the Internet they decide its best for them.

I honestly think Google should teach at least 1 or 2 of this companies a lesson by blocking them for a few days so they receive gazillions of tech support calls and emails from their users complaining about this. I honestly don´t know if this guys are so idiotic to think they can get away with this. Google can kill them immediately if they want. How many customers would they lose in a week if Google blocks their users? French users have allot of choices and they would immediately switch providers.

Thanks for them, Google does not condemn this type of acts, otherwise they really hit them with the same stick. But a nice message on Youtube or Google homepage that suggest switching providers based on what they do should already be a warning for them.

I also agree 100% with comments here that Google paying one of the trolls was a huge mistake. Now everyone is going to request the same deal. I honestly find it amazing that Google actually decided to pay one of this blackmailers.

So now Google pays them, and their users also pays them for surfing. What a nice business, charging both sides!!!! Who is next? Facebook, Netlix, Amazon?

Ah my. What has Google done when paying them. Huge awful mistake. I honestly hope Google knows this is nothing similar to free Internet and net neutrality at all.

The next step in the cat-and-mouse game will be for Google to provide a script to webmasters to detect whether users are blocking ads, and disable the site if that's the case. As someone who runs a website whose sole revenue source is ads, I would turn that on in a heartbeat. I understand some users currently block ads but wholesale blocking by an ISP is a whole different matter.

Doubling dipping by ISPs. The users are the ones requesting the data - and the users are paying for the connection.

Nothing but simple greed.

Exactly ! It wasn't good enough for the Rich Pricks and the Greedy Politicians to completely screw the Economy of the World these types will never stop.That is until the people rise up as they have done before.Think back Four Decades or so and do some studying.This type of dispute is the same face we have seen and in more than one Industry.The Big Wigs should learn some History and maybe watch Star Wars.All of us Techies know what the Tarkin Doctrine is.

The next step in the cat-and-mouse game will be for Google to provide a script to webmasters to detect whether users are blocking ads, and disable the site if that's the case. As someone who runs a website whose sole revenue source is ads, I would turn that on in a heartbeat. I understand some users currently block ads but wholesale blocking by an ISP is a whole different matter.

That's easy, put a function deep inside a critical script file that checks your ad-frame for content and if it's visable. There are only so many ways to block ads & with those ways there is always a check to see if the block worked.

Exactly -- if the way users are using their connection is costing the ISPs more than what the users are paying -- make the users pay more. But they wouldn't do that, it would be a bad PR move -- better to try to blame it on the content providers.

Why should users be the ones paying more when the services they are accessing are ad supported and consume many more resources than the rest of the web?

It's in Google's interest to provide a good service to their users who view their ads, so they should at least partly pay for the pipe and infrastructure taking Google's traffic into the ISP.

Actually Google as well as many CDNs already do this for a lot of ISPs out there, it's hardly new. See Akamai's Accelerated Network Partner Program for example.

The next step in the cat-and-mouse game will be for Google to provide a script to webmasters to detect whether users are blocking ads, and disable the site if that's the case. As someone who runs a website whose sole revenue source is ads, I would turn that on in a heartbeat. I understand some users currently block ads but wholesale blocking by an ISP is a whole different matter.

But do you think someone would then disable this ad blocking? No. He would just go away from the site. Someone visiting your site without ads is still better than no visit at all, even when its costing your bandwidth and server resources for nothing.

I can see while some people could prefer this but that is no the solution. The solution is pretty much very simple. This ad blocking just block major advertising networks. If you put a simple image as an ad on a website they can´t detect this. If this becomes main stream websites will just use customized ad networks which cannot be blocked, unless you want to block all the images and JavaScript on the Internet.

A domain or script which randomizes names could even do the trick. But that is not the point. If someone wants to block ads, give them the option. You are doing something wrong them. You should try to display useful ads, and in a decent and proper way. Its websites abusing ads that leads to this.

Also, allot of people blocking ads don´t realize that they would not prefer to pay each website as pay per view, and by doing this they are basically killing websites which are free and live on ads revenue. If ad blocking goes main stream, more than half of the Internet, websites, blogs, etc would vanish because there would be no incentive for them anymore to maintain their websites. Others would switch to a pay per view model where you pay for each website you visit. People don´t realize this, but they are actually hurting the Internet with this ad blocking stuff. They are shooting themselves in the foot, because they want free ads websites but most of them would not pay a dime for each website they surf either.

Its not complicated to make ads which by pass ad blockers, the point is that most people understand that this websites live based on ads, and I personally do not use ad blockers because I like the full experience on a website, not a half cut website, because sometimes it blocks more than just ads, it has false positives as well.

Exactly -- if the way users are using their connection is costing the ISPs more than what the users are paying -- make the users pay more. But they wouldn't do that, it would be a bad PR move -- better to try to blame it on the content providers.

Why should users be the ones paying more when the services they are accessing are ad supported and consume many more resources than the rest of the web?

It's in Google's interest to provide a good service to their users who view their ads, so they should at least partly pay for the pipe and infrastructure taking Google's traffic into the ISP.

Actually Google as well as many CDNs already do this for a lot of ISPs out there, it's hardly new. See Akamai's Accelerated Network Partner Program for example.

You don´t know how the Internet works. Google and every single website ALREADY is paying for delivering to the end pipe. Hosting is not free. Neither is a datacenter, and neither allow carriers which send data for Google to the end users. They are already paying.

Users should not pay for websites that consume more either. You are right with this. Users should pay the same regardless of what they access, in either case the ISP can always charge per transfer or have a fixed speed limit. Wait, all have this already !!! So actually users are paying already, and so is Google.

What this Internet service providers want, is Google paying more than the rest because they assume users want to use Google, so they hurt their service. What they don´t understand is that their clients would not use as much Internet either if this service did not exist.

When someone here said users should be charged, they said the ISP should raise their prices or go out of business. Simple. If they cannot provide a service and earn money they are just to stupid to run a business. If they are providing unrealistic speed and bandwidth to their customers for an under paid price, its their own fault, they cannot request Google or other companies to pay for them.

Most ISP lie. That is the problem. They advertise speeds for amazing prices but they calculate most people will not use this connections. They sell you a 24/7 connections for certain speeds, but if everyone would use the connections 24/7 for the advertised speed they would go out of business because they deceived their customers in the service.

This is the real problem. Their users and in general worldwide users are using more and more Internet, so they are starting to realize the effects of their own mistakes when selling their services.

One thing non french-readers should know : Free charges a 96 euros termination fee - minus a 3 percent discount for each month the contract lasted. Makes you think twice about leaving. Oh and when I was one of their customers, there were horror stories floating around that sometimes they'd pretend you didn't give them back their modem, and charge you 400 euros for it.

On the other end, they also are the ones who regularly drive the prices down in the french telco landscape, which buys them a lot of customer loyalty.

It seems like everyone here agrees that Google is right and that ISPs should support entirely by themselves the costs of connections... But is really like that?The problem is not the general bandwidth use on the ISP network (for instance, there is no throttling and no problem using BitTorrent on Free's network), the problem is the cost to connect to YouTube in particular. If a bigger pipe is needed between YouTube and an ISP, who should pay for it? Probably both, since they are both on the opposite side on the pipe (and the traffic is also highly asymmetrical!), and they both need it.It seems like Google has already signed financial agreements with several ISPs, including in the US, and not just with Orange. Also, rumors say Google and Free were closed to an agreement before Christmas, but then Google backed up at the last minute, which caused this retaliation by Free (and apparently, it was planned to be temporary too, it's not because of the government intervention that they stopped today).

It seems like everyone here agrees that Google is right and that ISPs should support entirely by themselves the costs of connections... But is really like that?The problem is not the general bandwidth use on the ISP network (for instance, there is no throttling and no problem using BitTorrent on Free's network), the problem is the cost to connect to YouTube in particular. If a bigger pipe is needed between YouTube and an ISP, who should pay for it? Probably both, since they are both on the opposite side on the pipe (and the traffic is also highly asymmetrical!), and they both need it.It seems like Google has already signed financial agreements with several ISPs, including in the US, and not just with Orange. Also, rumors say Google and Free were closed to an agreement before Christmas, but then Google backed up at the last minute, which caused this retaliation by Free (and apparently, it was planned to be temporary too, it's not because of the government intervention that they stopped today).

Another person that does not understand how the Internet works. TCP/IP is a routed protocol, it was created so in case of nuclear attacks, the data would still find its way home.

There are no such things as end pipes, the ISP does not have an end connection to Youtube or any other website either. The data can flow from one part to the other like it wants, depending on congestion, speed, etc.

There are thousands and thousands of datacenters worldwide hosting billions of websites. Not a single ISP could have an end connection or pipe to everyone. The reason why Internet works is that everyone can connect to everyone. Just like you don´t have an end connection to Arstechnica.com either.

Why should Google pay and everyone else not? Should not every single website them pay the ISP for every time a customer of them visits them? This is impossible, and this is why website or server owners pay for bandwidth in their datacenters, and the reason why an end users pays the same to his Internet service provider. Of course its more complex but the way Internet works today is the same it has worked all this years just fine.

The problem is Google is huge and they want to cash them. Simple. Youtube and Google itself does not even have one datacenter, they distribute their service among different continents in multiple datacenters, so the connection can sometimes go to one place and other time to another place.

Its the whole point and idea that is immoral. Its like saying France should pay more EU taxes over Portugal because it has 6 times as many people that consume air. Air which is for everyone. Internet is more or less the same.

You cannot decide Google should pay more because they are doing such an amazing job that everyone wants to use them. Its penalizing success. Is like telling you that you will earn less in your job because you are such a hard worker. Its against the same principle of economy. Its unfair, injustice and its a hidden tax for Google. One pays, the others not. Google does not need Free users. FREE needs Google. Otherwise their customers would switch the ISP. Why?

Because its not Google forcing them to visit them. Its what their own customers want. Its free customers that want to visit Google or Youtube. Nobody is forcing them.

If you agree Google should pay, then we could say the same thing for absolutely any other business. A major TV channel should pay more if they are popular because more people watch them. Or someone commenting here on Ars should be penalized the more he comments. You cannot penalize someone which is helping you grow.

I don´t see any legal or moral ground of what the ISP is asking in the first place. They already charge their customers. They should be in jail or heavily fined for trying to blackmail another company.

EDIT: And by the way, you are wrong on the Bittorent traffic as well. Years back almost every ISP in the world blocked P2P ports and tried to block this protocols, for the same reason, because people just used to much bandwidth. So this is nothing new. In the case of P2P they just could not point at a single person or company to request money, so they blocked ports or made the connection slower. This is no different than today, except Google has a public face which they can demand money.

Listen up, you greedy bastard ISPs: YouTube, Netflix, etc. are the reason you are profitable and can sell those high-priced plans. They are not "costing you money;" you exist because customers pay you to access them.

Listen up, you greedy bastard ISPs: YouTube, Netflix, etc. are the reason you are profitable and can sell those high-priced plans. They are not "costing you money;" you exist because customers pay you to access them.

Yes, but you have to remember, this is a world in which people argue that giving all the money only to the very wealthiest people is a good idea because they're job creators, drilling for oil in fragile ecological areas is a better investment than renewable energy development, and the existence of currently unanswered scientific areas is proof of Creationism does it really surprise you that these same right-wing groups would attempt to espouse the idea that they should be paid from both sides just by virtue of their positioning as the last mile gatekeepers?

Most ISP lie. That is the problem. They advertise speeds for amazing prices but they calculate most people will not use this connections. They sell you a 24/7 connections for certain speeds, but if everyone would use the connections 24/7 for the advertised speed they would go out of business because they deceived their customers in the service.

If you suggest selling capacity at anything other then a 1:1 ratio is a lie, then man are you a fool. It's damn near impossible to find ANYONE selling bandwidth at 1:1, because it's simply to damn expensive to do so, and foolish. Over subscription is the norm because people DON'T utilize the connection to capacity 24/7, and as such you can sell the service at a reasonable rate by oversubscribing.

Consider the following, these are numbers from the Municipal ISP I work for:

~11k wireline subscribers, let's use 10k to make the math easy, mostly GPON as we are just finishing up our conversion from DOCSIS.

Standard package is 12Mbps/1Mbps

So, if you think over subscription is a lie, then we should have 120,000Mbps, or 120Gbps of capacity.Now let's look at actual use, which peaks at about 3Gbps, of that 3Gbps, about 1/3rd is Netflix.At peak time (9PM-11PM) we only use 3Gbps, but you're suggesting we pay for 40 times that.

Let's make this easy, and say $1/Mbps/Month capacity. This is realistic for an ISP like us mind you, and probably a low ball.

For 10Gbps of capacity, that's $10,000/Month in cost to ISP.For 120Gbps of capacity, that's $120,000/Month.

If you want guaranteed bandwidth, be ready to pay 10 times the price. Mind you that the other ISPs you transit, like Level 3, HE, Cogent, etc, DON'T do 1:1 capacity either, so it ultimately becomes moot.

You don´t know how the Internet works. Google and every single website ALREADY is paying for delivering to the end pipe. Hosting is not free. Neither is a datacenter, and neither allow carriers which send data for Google to the end users. They are already paying.

LOL I don't how the Internet works... funny guy.

Google only pays for their own network and up to public Internet exchange points or private exchanges.From then on it's the ISP who foots the bill, so no, Google is not paying to the end of the pipe.

This worked well when the traffic across the peering point is at least a little balanced, especially since high speed connections are usually symmetrical.

However in Google's case it's almost 100% Google's traffic, so the ISP has to pay for a HUGE pipe to carry almost only downstream traffic from the peering point and it's upstream is almost unused (just TCP syns and acks). It then has to carry this across their own network too.

This becomes very hard and very expensive problem when the fastest commercial transmission tech at the moment doesn't go over 10Gbit/s - 100Gbit/s is still a mirage - and even 10G is crazy expensive.

So when many of your users want to watch HD videos at 1080p (10Mbit/s peaks) from a single source (Google) that becomes a problem.

Its main use is as a high-end fixed and wireless modem (802.11g MIMO), but it also allows Free to offer additional services over ADSL, such as IPTV including high definition (1080p), Video recording with timeshifting capabilities, digital radio and VoIP telephone service via one RJ-11 connector (the first version came with 2 such jacks but only one was ever activated)

The Freebox is provided free to the subscribers, its value being 190 Euros, according to the operator. It is delivered with a remote control, a multimedia box equipped with a 250 GB hard drive, and accessories (cables and filters). "

I'm curious how Free went about blocking ads. If they were actively monitoring their customers' internet browsing for any visits to Google sites, I'd be worried about the privacy implications.

It was done with simple DNS hijacking: Free's DNS servers resolve all DoubleClick domains to the local http server that runs on the ADSL modems supplied by Free (called "Freebox", it does much more than a simple ADSL modem though). This http server returns a 0 byte document for the hijacked domains.

I find it a surprising move from Free: They have done a lot for the Internet in France, they were the first to offer true-unlimited internet and push for local loop unbundling: in France the phone exchanges belong to the old national operator (FT) and it didn't allow private companies to install their ADSL kit in the local exchanges, until Free pushed for this. They also recently introduced unlimited mobile internet for 20 euros/months, again something unheard of in France.

Maybe they're more pissed off by the fact that Orange (which is actually FT, still partly government owned) managed to get some money from Google when other ISPs got nothing.

So when many of your users want to watch HD videos at 1080p (10Mbit/s peaks) from a single source (Google) that becomes a problem.

That's what happens when the only reason your users ever upgraded the connections they are paying for monthly is because they want to watch HD videos from that single source.

Google, the "american" company, is already present in every significant internet exchange in Europe, is it not? How are they not paying for their "share of the burden"? All ISPs have to do is connect to the local exchange. Traffic at the exchange is asymmetric? Boohoo. Their users are initiating connections, and requesting data; not Google. Maybe the ISPs should control these DOS attacks from their users, so as to not tax Google servers so much. That's how ridiculous this is.

If you agree Google should pay, then we could say the same thing for absolutely any other business. A major TV channel should pay more if they are popular because more people watch them. Or someone commenting here on Ars should be penalized the more he comments. You cannot penalize someone which is helping you grow.

Terrible analogies.

TV channels (at least terrestrial) do pay greatly to have their signal delivered to everyone's homes. The more homes covered the higher the cost.

Google, the "american" company, is already present in every significant internet exchange in Europe, is it not? How are they not paying for their "share of the burden"? All ISPs have to do is connect to the local exchange. Traffic at the exchange is asymmetric? Boohoo. Their users are initiating connections, and requesting data; not Google. Maybe the ISPs should control these DOS attacks from their users, so as to not tax Google servers so much. That's how ridiculous this is.

Google the "american company" is paying their share of the burden by being at European Internet Exchanges? Well no, traffic would still get to Google's US servers.

However if Google weren't in Europe their European service would be laggy opening a massive opportunity for European online video companies. Then European ISPs could sell more business services to those companies with the added benefit that the load would be better distributed. Perhaps those companies would even pay local taxes.

So no, Google is not doing European ISPs any favours by being at European exchanges. It's entirely in their own interest.